Ernst Toller (1 December 1893 – 22 May 1939) was a German left-wing playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, and was imprisoned for five years for his actions.[1] He wrote several plays and poetry during that period, which gained him international renown. They were performed in London and New York as well as Berlin. In 2000, several of his plays were published in an English translation.

In 1933 Toller was exiled from Germany after the Nazis came to power. He did a lecture tour in 1936-1937 in the United States and Canada, settling in California for a while before going to New York. He joined other exiles there. Struggling financially and depressed at learning his brother and sister had been sent to a concentration camp in Germany, he committed suicide in May 1939.

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Toller was born in 1893 into a Jewish family in Samotschin (Szamocin), Province of Posen, Prussia (Posen is now part of Poland). He had a sister and brother. They grew up speaking Yiddish and German, and he later became fluent in English.

At the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for military duty. After serving for thirteen months on the Western Front,[1] he suffered a complete physical and psychological collapse. His first drama, Transformation (Die Wandlung, 1919), was wrought from his wartime experiences.

Karlheinz Martin's production of Transformation in Berlin with Fritz Kortner as the war returnee, 30 September 1919

The noted authors Max Weber and Thomas Mann testified on Toller's behalf when he was tried for his part in the revolution. He was sentenced to only five years in prison. He served his sentence in the prisons of Stadelheim, Neuburg, Eichstätt. From February 1920 until his release, he was in the fortress of Niederschönenfeld, where he spent 149 days in solitary confinement and 24 days on hunger strike.[3]

His time in prison was productive; he completed work on Transformation, which premiered in Berlin under the direction of Karlheinz Martin in September 1919. At the time of Transformation's 100th performance, the Bavarian government offered Toller a pardon. He refused it out of solidarity with other political prisoners. Toller continued writing in prison, completing some of what would be his most celebrated works, including the dramas Masses Man (Masse Mensch), The Machine Breakers (Die Maschinenstürmer), Hinkemann, the German (Der deutsche Hinkemann), and many poems. These works established him as an important German expressionist playwright, and they used symbols derived from the First World War and its aftermath in his society.

Not until after his release from prison in July 1925 was Toller able to see any of his plays performed. In 1925, the most famous of his later dramas, Hoppla, We're Alive! (Hoppla, wir Leben!), directed by Erwin Piscator, premiered in Berlin. It tells of a revolutionary discharged from a mental hospital after eight years, who discovers that his former comrades have grown complacent and compromised within the system they once opposed. In despair, he kills himself.[4]

In 1933, after the Nazi rise to power, Toller was exiled from Germany because of his work; the Nazis did not like modernist arts of any form. His citizenship was nullified by the Nazi government later that year. He traveled to London. In 1935, he participated as co-director in the Manchester production of his play Rake Out the Fires (Feuer aus den Kesseln).

In 1936 and 1937, Toller went on a lecture tour of the United States and Canada, settling in California. Fluent in English, he wrote screenplays but could not get them produced. In 1936 he moved to New York City, where he joined a group of artists and writers in exile, including Klaus Mann, Erika Mann (at one time married to the poet W.H. Auden, who was also in the US), and Therese Giehse. He earned some money from journalism.

Two of his early plays were produced in New York in this period: The Machine Wreckers (1922), whose opening night in 1937 he attended, and No More Peace! in 1938, which lasted for only four performances. Their sense of immediacy was gone: the first play was related to the First World War and its aftermath, and the second an earlier period of the rise of the Nazis. Their style was outmoded for New York, and the poor reception added to Toller's discouragement.[5] The political activities of Toller and the other prominent Jews in the establishment of the Bavarian Socialist Republic and their other activities played a major role in inspiring the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis. [1]

The English author Robert Payne, who knew Toller in Spain and in Paris, later wrote in his diary that Toller had said shortly before his death:

"If ever you read that I committed suicide, I beg you not to believe it." Payne continued: "He hanged himself with the silk cord of his nightgown in a hotel in New York two years ago. This is what the newspapers said at the time, but I continue to believe that he was murdered."[7]

I Was a German: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary (1934), New York: Paragon

Nie Wieder Friede! (No More Peace) (1935)[5] First published and produced in English, as he was living in London, but it was written originally in German.

Briefe aus dem Gefängnis (1935) (Letters from Prison), Amsterdam

In 2000, Alan Pearlman published his translation into English of several of Toller's plays.[8] The literary rights to the works of Ernst Toller were the property of the novelist Katharine Weber until the copyright expired on December 31, 2009. His works have now entered the public domain.